


Rearrange the Stars

by themerrygentleman



Category: Overwatch (Video Game)
Genre: Character Development, F/M, Gen, Road Trips
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2018-07-04
Updated: 2018-08-02
Packaged: 2019-06-04 22:40:13
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 3
Words: 14,000
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/15157181
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/themerrygentleman/pseuds/themerrygentleman
Summary: In the years since Lúcio started a revolution that drove the Vishkar Corporation out of Rio, Symmetra had hoped she'd never have to deal with him again. But when Vishkar orders her to go undercover and spy on his international concert tour, disguised as his personal assistant, things are going to get much more complicated than that.





	1. Utopaea

**I. Utopaea**

* * *

 

Satya Vaswani walked into the Vishkar Corporation boardroom with a head full of the future.

That head was also full of a dull, insistent ache: Satya was running on several fewer hours of sleep than she was used to. It wasn't like her to deviate from her routine like this, but just this once, she hadn't been able to resist. The previous day, dozens of papers and dissertations had been made available on Vishkar's internal network, new scholarship from the latest batch of graduates of the Architech Academy. The new generation was producing extraordinary work, weaving hard light into smooth, organic curves that had the potential to completely revolutionize much of the city's infrastructure. In spite of herself, Satya had been enthralled and had stayed up half the night, reading and taking notes until everything finally blurred out of focus.

She'd awoken the next morning with her senses rubbed raw, to a world that was all sharp edges, everything too harsh and immediate to bear. The morning sunlight of an objectively mild day had become a searing glare; the normal bustle of passers-by had turned into something enormous and close and suffocating. Once she'd escaped into the cool, still confines of the central architech studio, she'd closed her eyes and breathed out a fervent prayer of thanks.

That, of course, had been when her visor had lit up with a bright-blinking message alert. Mandatory meeting, corporation HQ, top floor boardroom, ten o'clock sharp.

Now, Satya stood in the threshold of the boardroom, straightened her posture, and did her best to hold her head high. Despite the mercifully low light, there was no mistaking the white-and-indigo Vishkar uniforms of the men and women clustered around the table. Ten pairs of eyes met her own resolute gaze: all of the department heads, as well as two very senior executives. None of them were making small talk with each other, and in the quiet Satya detected the low, grating hum of anti-surveillance tech at work.

Holding court in the center of it all, as usual, was Satya’s own supervisor, Sanjay Korpal. After a moment, he caught her eye and gave her a satisfied nod. "Thank you for joining us so promptly. Please, take a seat."

Satya returned his nod, straightened her own uniform, and pulled out a chair. The conference table was one great, solid slab of mahogany: no hard-light constructs here, not for the upper echelons of Vishkar management. Above it, a cluster of holo-displays flickered and danced, reflected in the polished surface: news feeds, graphs, scatterplots, schematics. Satya's weary eyes tried and failed to keep up with the glittering stream of information.

Nothing for it but the direct approach. She took in a deep breath and started speaking. "Thank you. Might I ask why you've called me here? The next general board meeting isn't scheduled until the seventeenth..."

Sanjay pressed his hands together, frowning. "You're right, of course. But as I'm sure you can appreciate, we find ourselves in extraordinary circumstances. Vishkar is facing a time of great crisis...and, perhaps, one of great opportunity as well."

Satya narrowed her eyes as she regarded him. That kind of cryptic overture could only mean one thing: the people gathered here had no need for Satya Vaswani today. No, they needed _Symmetra._

With an imperceptible sigh, Satya let go of her hopes of talking over new architectural innovations with the department heads. In their place, she started mentally planning out the quickest route back to her apartment to retrieve her other uniform and her photon projector. Hopefully today's mission, whatever it was, would involve a minimum of heavy gunfire.

On the outside, she kept her tone as light and diplomatic as she could. "Crisis? Are you referring to our recent cybersecurity concerns, or am I missing something?"

"You need to think bigger than that," snapped one of the other executives. The Vice President for Public Relations, Satya was fairly sure: an older woman with iron-colored hair and deepset frown lines. Something about her chiding tone conjured up echoes from Satya's childhood: _Get your head out of the clouds, stay focused, don't ask so many questions..._

With a slight shake of her head, she brought herself back to the present. The vice president had conjured up a number of news cuttings from the holo-display on the table: video footage of rioting crowds, screencaps of Vishkar webpages defaced with wide-eyed purple skulls, jagged graphs of profit margins and stock prices.

"What we're seeing now is symptomatic of a problem on a global scale," she continued, sweeping the headlines away with the dismissive wave of one hand. "Our cybersecurity division is investigating the Sombra hacker collective now, but what matters is the pattern: once again, an anonymous figure has arisen from nowhere to undermine Vishkar's interests. And once again, that figure is attracting followers at an alarming rate. One voice of dissent burgeoning into a movement."

"A dangerous precedent," Sanjay cut in. "I know I don't need to tell you where it all started."

In the pause that followed, Satya felt her stomach turn over. She'd hoped, she'd really hoped, that that part of her life could just stay buried in the past where it belonged. But everything had a way of bubbling back up to the surface, whether she liked it or not.

She knew exactly what answer Sanjay expected from her, and she gave it in almost a whisper. "Rio de Janeiro."

The stern-looking vice president shook her head. "Not with a city. With a man. With the problem we have called you here today to solve: Lúcio Correia dos Santos."

At her words, a holographic model of Lúcio rose up from the table. Satya watched it slowly rotate in place, feeling her heart thump in her chest. He'd changed a little in the years since the riots. The scruffy goatee was new, Satya noted with distaste, and he’d upgraded his trademark bulky headphones. But it was still the same face she'd seen plastered beneath a hundred disastrous headlines. The dreadlocks, the crooked grin, the dangerous glint in his eyes beneath the shining green visor. In one hand, he brandished a device like a mutant loudspeaker--the Vishkar riot-control technology he'd stolen and perverted to fuel his insurrection.

Sanjay cleared his throat. "If recent events have made one thing clear, it is that this man's sordid little story has not yet reached its end as we'd all hoped. Which brings us to the purpose of this meeting."

He picked up a small remote from the table and touched a button. The holo-displays floating above the tabletop whisked over to the nearest wall, spreading themselves out to full size. At the center of the display was a blocky, stylized logo in white: the head of a smiling frog wearing headphones. Beneath this dubious amphibian unfurled a long list of place names and dates. Satya's eyes flicked down the column: Cologne, Paris, London. New York, Chicago, Dorado, Los Angeles. Sydney. Tokyo, Seoul, Shanghai. St. Petersburg, Ilios, Cairo, Numbani. Rio de Janeiro.

"'The Synaesthesia Auditiva World Tour,'" another executive explained, in the scornful, bitter tone of someone naming a blasphemy. "It would seem that local agitation was not enough for this Lúcio. Now that he's had a taste of notoriety, he intends to take his message worldwide."

"To many of the metropolitan centers, no less, where the Vishkar Corporation is attempting to establish a permanent presence," Sanjay pointed out. "While many of the tracks on this album carry generic messages of unity and encouragement and not much else, others are far more pointed. I should point out that one song is titled 'Hard Light, Hard Time.' Not exactly subtle."

Satya clenched her jaw tight and didn't say a word. Without thinking about it, she'd begun fidgeting with her prosthetic hand, drumming the fingers rapidly against the palm over and over. The soft, repetitive _clickclickclickclickclick_ was somehow soothing, an anchor to focus on, to draw her back out of the chaos and the noise roiling at the back of her mind.

Too many bad memories from Rio. A building exploding into flames, the ragdoll bodies of fallen security guards, a raw burn mark defacing the once-perfect features of a young girl. Gorgeous hard-light constructs sparking and glitching and vanishing into nothing. The roaring chant of a sea of protesters, countless holoscreens with dire warnings of international bankruptcy. More than enough in one city, barely enough to contain, but a dozen more? Too much, too much....

"I can see you appreciate the gravity of the situation," came the echo of an executive's voice. Clearly Satya hadn't been able to keep her face as cool and neutral as she'd hoped. She let her breath out in a hiss, trying to bring herself back to the present-day reality of the conference room, and nodded helplessly.

Sanjay shifted uncomfortably in his chair. "It's true that we have yet to find a direct connection between our recent hacking troubles and what happened in Rio. But in both cases, there are too many similarities to ignore. Similar groundswells of resistance, spurred on by the encouragement of similar charismatic figures. Vishkar's public image is critical to our success, you know that as well as I do. I won't mince words: the idea of dos Santos spreading his message to a worldwide audience could spell catastrophe for our future prospects."

"Catastrophe hardly does the situation justice," said another executive: the Vice President for Mergers and Acquisitions, finally breaking the silence he'd kept since the beginning of the meeting. "If this man is allowed to achieve worldwide fame--and more than that, legitimacy and approval on the global stage--after what he has done, we will see anti-Vishkar sentiments and actions proliferate virally within a matter of months.”

He conjured a flock of graphs in midair with the wave of one hand, each one telling the same story: the company’s public image, its stock prices, its bottom line, all plunging into a steep decline with no warning. “There will be more protests, more riots. The LumériCo partnership is on rocky ground as it is--it’s unlikely that it would survive such a groundswell. And that will only be the beginning. Many of our business partners, actual and potential, will simply disown us outright. What we are seeing now is merely the first few drops of rain before a coming storm. One that may yet sweep us all away."

Satya inclined her head in a slight nod of acknowledgement. She wondered if the other people seated around the table could hear her heart beating in the stillness. "I see. What do you intend to do about it?"

Another of the department heads leaned forward and folded his hands, expensive wristwatch glinting in the silver-blue hologram light. "Satya, would you agree that a problem must be understood before it can be truly solved?"

Satya bristled, feeling a chill run up her spine. The past few years had given her entirely too much practice at sensing when someone was laying a trap with their words. But for all that the back of her mind was shouting at her to escape as soon as she could, she knew she had no real options. "That sounds like a wise philosophy," she said aloud, making her words as slow and guarded as she could.

Sanjay nodded briskly, as if those few words had settled everything. "I knew you would agree. And that is why we will be sending you along on the concert tour, undercover as a personal assistant supplied by Lúcio's record label."

Complete silence fell for a moment, save for the low hum of the surveillance jamming tech.

"I'm sorry. _What?_ " said Satya.

"Lúcio and his actions in Rio are the origin point of all the recent disruption that has plagued this company," the Vice President for Public Relations said, in the slow, deliberate tones of someone explaining the obvious to a small child. "Every different system we've used to model the spread of information has confirmed it. We cannot afford to ignore this concert tour, and we need more data on how Lúcio attracts followers and spreads his message so virulently. That is where you come in."

"We've taken the liberty of constructing the basics of your false identity for you, with all of the relevant paperwork attached," Sanjay said, picking up within a breath of his colleague leaving off. "She’s quiet, efficient, professional, she’s worked in the music industry for the past ten years--and, of course, has no Vishkar ties whatsoever. A briefing packet has been forwarded to your personal terminal with more detailed information, as well as Lúcio's full itinerary. And suggestions for your disguise."

"My disguise," Satya said flatly. There was nothing in her head but a hollow ringing--she was pretty sure her brain had gotten left behind about ten sentences ago, and was still scrambling to catch up.

"I did say you'd be undercover," Sanjay confirmed, with something that broadly resembled a smile. "Lúcio and his crew of rioters are likely to have a long memory for Vishkar personnel, so you will have to make precautions accordingly. You'll be taking along your photon projector in case of emergencies, of course, but with luck you'll never need to use it. Otherwise: new clothes, a new name, nothing to tie you back to the Corporation."

"But, I, I--" Satya spluttered. On most days, she loved the efficiency with which Vishkar was run, but now she wanted to curse it. If everyone would just slow down, even for a moment...

"We'll expect at least one full report for every stop on the concert tour, and additional updates for any unforeseen circumstances," a relentless department head informed her.

"No," Satya choked out. Then again, stronger, after she'd heard what a feeble croak the first attempt had been: "NO. I can't--this--this isn't what I do. I'm an _Architech_."

Sanjay cleared his throat, half-hiding a chiding smile behind his fist. "You're rather more than that these days, Symmetra."

Satya bit her lip at the mention of her code name. She hadn't missed a single one of the implications Sanjay had meant that name to carry, or the weight with which he'd dropped it on her.

"In fact," he continued as though she hadn't understood at all, "you may well be the finest covert agent this corporation has ever employed...."

"I know that," Satya snapped, making herself look him right in the eye. "But if you truly believe that is so, why won’t you utilize my talents in a way that will allow me to play to my strengths? Infiltration, espionage, data gathering, whatever you require. But I don't know the first thing about managing a concert tour. I can't---"

She fell silent, hating herself for the way her voice had cracked on the last word. She couldn't make herself start speaking again--there were too many possible ways that sentence could end. _I can't leave my work here. I can't go and live with some kind of troupe of musical anarchists. I can't spend months telling lies with every waking breath, and expect not to be found out immediately. I can't handle this._

_I can't believe you all agreed to assign me to this job in the first place._

Satya knew it was all there in her Vishkar personnel file. She'd seen it herself, the last time her quarterly evaluation had rolled around. The string of diagnostic code that represented her own particular place on the autism spectrum. Beneath it, a list of symptoms and manifestations. Prominent among them: aversion to crowds, hatred of disorder, susceptibility to sensory overload...which just about summed up the parameters of her new job description.

Sanjay had assured her on countless occasions that he understood. That Vishkar understood. That the way her mind worked was not a liability but an asset, the source of a unique and creative perspective that allowed her to create designs of unparalleled beauty, to weave Utopaea's future into being.

She'd believed him. Until now. Now, she was beginning to wonder how many of the people gathered around the table had ever looked at her personnel file at all.

Sanjay cleared his throat, then looked back up from the tabletop and met Satya's eyes. "I assure you, I can understand your hesitation. These are strange times, Satya, and they ask strange things of all of us. But please don't doubt the necessity of it for a second."

He pushed himself up from the table and, deftly navigating around the row of chairs on his side of the room, made his way over to the far wall. At the touch of a fingerprint, a window sprang into being from nothing, covering the majority of the wallspace. "Step over here for a moment and look out this window, if you would."

Satya gritted her teeth and pushed herself down further in her chair. Even on the best of days, being spoken to as though she were a child galled her, and by now this was far from the best of days. "Whatever point you are trying to illustrate..." she began, biting out the words.

Sanjay held up a calm hand. "Humor me for a moment, please. I think we both have need of a little perspective."

Not seeing a better option, Satya stood and joined him. For a moment, she didn't look out the window as requested, but rather over at Sanjay. In the pale daylight that now flooded the boardroom, the lines on his impassive face stood out in sharper contrast than normal, as  did the flecks of grey in his hair. When had he begun looking this much older and wearier?

With a slight nod, Sanjay indicated the view beyond the window, the glassy spires of the city blinding in the midday sun. "Most of this was already built when you came here. You don't know how hard we had to fight for it. The government laughed at the notion of trying to create something so grand, so soon after the Omnic Crisis. They wanted a quick fix. Something small, modular, low to the ground, clinging to the wreckage. A bandage slapped over the wound. Back then, we all spent countless days in meeting rooms like this one, arguing, pleading, _begging_ them to look further ahead."

Sanjay's eyes slipped out of focus, lost in the view before him. "And now here we are. Utopaea. Whatever people might say, the name is no arrogant boast. It's a representation of a dream, the dream that lies at the heart of this company. The work we do here--the work you've helped us to accomplish--has defied all the odds and helped us to build a truly better way of life. I know you believe that just as much as I do."

Satya nodded, breathed out a "yes." Once again, Sanjay had managed to do that remarkable thing he always did: reach into her heart, pull out one of the shining, unspoken truths that lived there, and fashion it into the perfect words. This was the reason she never wanted to leave this city, the reason her heart still soared every morning when she pulled back the shade and looked out at that sweeping skyline.

”But that work is far from over. Satya, what is the defining factor of any true utopia?”

Satya gritted her teeth. “You have already explained this to me on multiple occasions. I don’t understand why you feel the need to…”

“I’m attempting to make a point. Please, indulge me.”

Satya sighed—she should have known there would be no way of stopping Sanjay once he got into one of his speechifying moods. “An alternative.”

“Radical alterity,” Sanjay specified, crisply rolling the r’s and punctuating each word with a rap of his knuckles against the windowsill.

“Utopia, by its very nature, constitutes a radical alternative, a completely different path from the norm. And convincing people to take that path is never easy. Resistance is to be expected. People don't know what they're rejecting, don't understand how much better things could be for them. Their struggle is so needless, so wasteful."

Sanjay sighed, his shoulders falling as the tension went out of them in one great slump. "Just look at this city, Satya. Its innovation, its prosperity, its potential. If our utopian experiment has worked so well here, it could work anywhere. Everywhere. But if that window of opportunity closes, if it's lost to the hands of the selfish and closed-minded, then it may never come again. We find ourselves at a tipping point, and we need you now more than ever."

Satya blinked away the tears that stung at the corner of her eyes, grateful that Sanjay wouldn't be able to see them through her visor. "I understand," she told him.

He nodded, not looking particularly surprised. "So you'll do it, then? You'll infiltrate Lúcio's concert tour for us?"

Satya gave herself just a moment to experience the giddy, dizzy feeling of someone teetering on the edge of a precipice. Then she bowed her head forward. "It would seem that I must."

Sanjay brightened immediately, and behind him she could see the other executives tapping instructions into their data slates. "We all have the utmost faith in you, Satya," Sanjay told her. "We wouldn't have dreamed of assigning a task of this importance to anyone else."

"What exactly are you planning to do about Lúcio once my mission is complete?" Satya bit her lip as soon as she'd asked it: she could still see the grim faces of the department heads as they'd prepared to cut their losses back in Rio, almost five years ago now. All things considered, "what are you planning to do _to_ Lúcio" might have been more accurate phrasing.

"That's undecided as yet," the Vice President for Public Relations told her. "The nature of the intelligence you provide will determine the nature of our response."

"We'll all be wishing you a safe journey," Sanjay put in, and Satya knew a dismissal when she heard one. She walked out of the room, numb, back straight, willing the seething chaos in her head to subside.

* * *

 Satya spent the rest of the day on a silent autopilot. By the time she'd tied up all of the loose ends at the architech studio, delegating the most important projects and shelving the less urgent ones, the sun was beginning to sink towards the horizon, painting the skyscrapers a hundred subtle shades of orange and violet and rust. She scarcely noticed, tracing the steps back to her apartment building as surely as an Omnic on a programmed track.

In the elevator, she had a few moments to take a deep breath and assess her mental state. She felt…she felt…

She didn't know yet how she felt. Blank. Hollow. Washed out. The ghosts of images and sensations, overlapping: a broken eggshell, a gray sky after a storm, the quiet roar of waves rolling to shore. All colorless and empty. Aftermath. Or more likely, the hush before it all came crashing back.

It didn’t matter. Right now, it didn’t matter. Routine, that was what she needed. Small tasks, simple steps to get ready for the journey. If she paused and let herself feel everything at once, she'd crumple under the weight of the panic, she knew it.

Unfortunately, once she'd let herself into her apartment, there wasn't much left to do. Packing would have to wait until tomorrow: clothes and accessories would all have to be bought new, making herself into a stranger from the ground up according to the Vishkar executives’ mandates. No one went hungry in Utopaea, so there was no one to give her perishable food items to: into the garbage chute they went, though not without a significant twinge of guilt on Satya's part. With the touch of a few buttons on the apartment's central control panel, hard-light fixtures shifted into new configurations, every system battening itself down to prepare for months of emptiness and silence.

After that, all that was left was to step out onto the balcony, watch the last few embers of the sunset, and wonder if saying goodbye to this place would ever get easier.

Everywhere Satya looked, she found another reminder of why this was her favorite view in the whole world. There were children playing in the plaza in front of her building, laughing and kicking a ball back and forth, and they were there because she’d served on a committee that had supervised the design and placement of new public spaces for the city. Further off in the distance, rising up above a forest of smaller buildings, Utopaea’s newest and tallest tower soared up to the heavens, catching the dazzling light of the evening sun. And it was there because she had helped design a new way to weave hard light into sturdier, more flexible skyscraper foundations.

Satya’s heart was here, shining in every street, every building. Why did working for the city she loved always have to tear her away from it, again and again?

She drummed her fingers against the balcony railing, breathing slowly in and out. Unbidden, another majestic skyline surfaced in her memory, layering itself over the familiar sight of Utopaea's towers: Ramoji Film City back in her first home of Hyderabad. Last she’d heard, it was still hanging onto its title as the largest film studio in the world, in defiance of the ravages of the Omnic Crisis and a new golden age of Hollywood an ocean away. She remembered being enchanted by tales of the place as a child, always hoping her parents would scrape together enough time and money for a visit.

Back then, it had sounded like a city of miracles, a new world every time you turned a corner. Wild west towns, lamplit streets from centuries long gone, spaceports and chapels and palaces and even a replica Omnium, all brought together into one miraculous whole where the past lived side by side with the present in one great timeless paradise. More than once, Satya had found herself lingering by the gates, dreaming about the wonders that surely lay within.

Years later, riding high on the excitement of her brand-new architech’s salary, Satya had actually visited the place. It had seemed right, somehow, the idea of completing a long-dreamed-of pilgrimage just as she began a new chapter of her life. But she’d quickly learned that the reality of the studio could never live up to her dazzling childhood fantasies. It was too easy for her to look backstage and see all of the false walls and hollow houses, too easy to find the seams and puzzle out how the magic was made. Even back then, she’d already had plenty of what she thought of as _confidence_ and what her classmates and professors had tended to call _arrogance_ , and at every turn she’d had to bite her tongue on the same thought: _I could do it better._

And now she _was_ doing it better, in a place where movie magic was made reality. When the Vishkar Corporation had first brought her here—just barely a teenager, all gangling limbs and wide eyes--Satya had thought she was stepping into paradise. And now here she was, finding a new way to make paradise better every day. On the good days, it still felt like an exhilarating dream: living in a reality that played by her rules, because she was one of the people who wrote them. Where she was the one conjuring it all into being, making it real and alive and perfect. But whenever she got used to it, something like _this_ would happen.

Without warning, the endless movie had stuttered to a halt, and the projectionist had put in a new reel, a nightmarish splice of a hundred different blockbusters, all unfamiliar, garish scenes and Technicolor sound and fury, the star no longer someone Satya could recognize as herself.

She sighed, set her jaw, and shook her head. That line of thought would not lead her anywhere useful, and anyway, it was getting dark. She waved open the balcony doors (yet another shimmering miracle of light made solid) and stepped back inside, still feeling not at all ready to confront what was coming.

Satya Vaswani, personal assistant to Lúcio Correia dos Santos.

The future that had turned impossibly strange. Somehow, she was just going to have to live with it.  



	2. Rio de Janeiro

**II. Rio de Janeiro**

* * *

 

The in-flight movie on the hyperjet to Rio was a superhero blockbuster, one of the many that had gained popularity in the wake of Overwatch's rise and fall. A blond, square-jawed champion (who bore a passing resemblance to Overwatch's own Strike Commander, the late Jack Morrison) sprinted between the crumbling towers of some anonymous city, the soundtrack thundering as he blasted killer robots into shrapnel.

Satya--no, scratch that, her name was Ananya Aluri for the next few months--watched it absently as she filled out a crossword puzzle from the in-flight magazine. She'd never particularly cared for such things, but something about the predictable bursts of sound and spectacle filled her mind with a pleasant kind of blankness, and at the moment that was just what she needed.

It wasn't like she had much else to focus on. She'd read through all of the dossiers and documents that Vishkar had sent along with her so many times now that to go over them yet again would have been a pointless redundancy, even for her. She knew every detail of her cover story as a personal assistant. She knew every step in the history of Lucio’s rise to fame, as a musician and then as an insurgent. She’d memorized the itinerary of the concert tour down to the minute. But all of those facts hadn’t yet managed to add up into anything she could have called a plan. Everything ahead was still _terra incognita_ , and the uneasy, hollow feeling in the pit of her stomach wouldn’t let her forget it.

Surfacing from that sea of information had left Satya restless. Try as she might to keep a clear head, doubts and overthinking had begun gnawing relentlessly away at her mind, turning her thoughts to ragged-edged worries. She drummed her fingers ceaselessly against the armrest, willing herself not to bite at her bottom lip too much--she couldn’t risk marring Ananya Aluri’s flawless lip gloss.

By the time the hyperjet angled into its descent, the movie's hero had saved the day, then put his unassuming civilian persona back on and slipped anonymously away into the crowd. Satya huffed out a laugh as the credits began to roll, her mouth twisted in an ironic half-smile. Until now, she'd always considered the concept of "secret identities" to be a faintly ridiculous fantasy, a holdover from comic-book history and nothing more. The notion that someone could perfectly disguise a famous face with nothing more than a different hairstyle and a new pair of glasses was far too contrived to have a place in the real world.

That was before she had put on Ananya Aluri's clothes this morning, and failed to recognize herself in the mirror. Her long hair up in a neat bun, thin-frame glasses replacing her usual visor headset, a soft brown cardigan over a cream-colored shirt instead of the flowing blue dresses she normally preferred. A few touches of unusual makeup, a few chunky, unfamiliar rings. That had been enough to turn her into another person altogether.

Ananya stood differently than Satya did, keeping her posture ruler-straight at all times and holding her limbs in close to her body. She talked differently, in a deep, soft and even tone that Satya had never used before. And the way that she looked out at the world felt different, too, without the smooth, cool shield of the visor in its usual place.

Satya just hoped it would be enough. She felt a subtle jarring as the hyperjet's landing gear clunked into place, and reminded herself to breathe.

 _Make a plan. There's always a way to make a plan. And if you have a plan, you can get out of anything._ She'd been repeating that mantra to herself ever since the hungry years in Hyderabad a lifetime ago, but it had been ages since the words had felt so desperate.

Some kind of plan. Anything to start with.

Stranded somewhere in the labyrinthine baggage claim of Galeão International Spaceport, waiting for her luggage to make an appearance out of the tangled forest of conveyor belts, Satya set to work constructing her introductory spiel. She and Lucio had communicated briefly by email the night before her flight took off, but he'd responded to her greeting with only a few words, not enough to really tell her anything about him. Accordingly, their first face-to-face meeting was going to be crucial.

( _You already know everything you need to know about him_ , the panicky side of her brain shouted at her, _he's a thief, he's violent, he's hurt Vishkar personnel, he'll remember your face and...._ )

She pressed that line of thought back down under the surface with a tiny, firm shake of her head. Not a productive line of inquiry. If this concert tour was going to succeed--if this surveillance operation was going to succeed, rather--she'd have to start somewhere. Clear and to the point. Logical and efficient. Beginning on the right foot, as the saying went.

Hello, Lucio. My name is Ananya Aluri, and I emailed you ( _no, strike that, not the right phrasing_ )...and we corresponded last night. I've been assigned by Goldshire Records as a personal assistant for the duration of your concert tour. I'll be handling a number of different administrative tasks, which include...( _no, bad idea, too long for an introduction, don't overstay your welcome_ )...which we can discuss in greater detail later. In the meantime, please let me know if there's anything else you require. ( _Is that enough? Should I say something else? Does that sound hospitable enough, or is it too cold?_ ) ( _Just leave it._ )

Yes, that sounded like a good start. A plan. Something to hold onto, just as one would hold onto a raft in a raging current, or to a parachute while tumbling helplessly through the open air.

 _Unhelpful metaphors. Don't dwell on them._ Satya was so busy rehearsing the speech in her head that she very nearly missed her suitcase trundling by and had to break into an undignified half-run to retrieve it. She wasn't surprised that she'd almost forgotten: this case was missing the familiar white-and-blue waveform of the Vishkar insignia, the one that marked the luggage she'd carried with her through ten different countries now. Satya narrowed her eyes at this suitcase as it sat there at her feet, square and beige and unremarkable, a stranger's life boxed up and delivered to her by mistake.

It should have been strange being back in Rio after all this time, she thought distantly as she stepped through the sliding doors and out into the simmering heat of the day. It should have been impossibly uncomfortable, every corner hiding a new reminder of the riots and the fire and all the rest of it.

But in truth, she felt almost nothing. There was too much other strangeness going on for her presence here to even register. She’d seen what she needed to see from the window of the hyperjet as it approached: the towers of the city center, the boxy waves of the favelas rolling out to the horizon, the outstretched arms of the _Cristo Redentor_ statue presiding over it all. And most importantly, the missing place in the distance where the Vishkar development should have been, an absence as obvious as a lost tooth, filled now only with the empty summer sky.

She’d let her mask slip long enough to feel a momentary pang, just then, craning her neck until the missing place was out of sight. This city could have been something else, once, if only everything could have worked the way it was supposed to.

But now she was back at ground level, that moment had come and gone, and here in the present she had a job to do. She kept her eyes straight ahead as she strode away from the airport in search of a taxi, not letting herself look back.  She focused instead on the regular, reassuring _clack_ of her heels against the tile, the cadence echoing in her head. _Make a plan. Make a plan._

Running more or less on autopilot, she made her way to the hotel, checked in, dropped off her bags, and hailed another taxi, rehearsing the opening of that crucial first meeting all the while.

_Hello, Lucio. My name is Ananya Aluri; we corresponded last night. I've been assigned by Goldshire Records as a personal assistant for the duration of your concert tour..._

She felt her shoulders slump noticeably in relief as the door of the taxi slammed, sealing away the outside and transporting her to a smaller, cooler, darker world. Satya clicked her seatbelt into place and stared straight ahead, not sparing the windows another glance.

After a ride that felt like a small eternity, the taxi dropped her off outside the building that she’d been told Lucio and his crew used for a rehearsal space. She curled her lip at the sight of it--the place was boxy and run-down, scrawled with layers of faded graffiti. Not exactly what she would have pictured for the haunt of an international superstar, but she supposed it was what Lucio would call “authenticity” or something of that nature.

Satya briskly stepped inside, grateful for a chance to get out of the humid afternoon, presented her credentials, and asked for directions to the green room.

_Hello, Lucio, I am Ananya Aluri; we corresponded last night. I’ve been assigned…_

“Not there?” said the harried-looking woman with a clipboard, the first person Satya could find to ask for directions in her limited Portuguese after she’d turned back from the empty, darkened green room. “They’re probably out on the main stage, then. Two doors down.”

Satya nodded: this, at least, made sense. “Practicing, then. Or fine-tuning their equipment.”

The other woman simply shrugged and ambled away.

_Hello, Lucio. I am Ananya Aluri; we corresponded last night..._

It was the work of just a few more moments to find the stage door and push it open. _There,_ she told herself, squaring her shoulders and doing her best to remember the way Ananya carried herself. _You see? Nothing’s been derailed. You’re figuring things out. Making progress. This will be simple._

_Hello, Lucio, I…_

The chorus of excited, echoing shouts and strange clacking noises probably should have warned her, but she noticed nothing until it was too late.

A small object hissed across the floor and smacked into Satya's foot, hard enough to sting. As she bent down to pick it up, frowning, something much larger collided with her: an ungainly, yelling shape, all skinny limbs and tangled hair. Both of them skidded to the floor in a heap, Satya just barely managing to brace herself against the worst of the fall.

The assailant stumbled back to his feet, giving Satya her first good look at him: a short man in dark blue athletic gear, his features obscured by a helmet. He stretched out a hand to help her up. Satya paused before taking it and picked up the small object that had hit her first, which had come to rest a few feet away: a small, battered disk of black rubber.

Belatedly, she registered that the man who’d collided with her was talking a mile a minute. "Oh, shit, I am so sorry! I did not see you there. I was about to make this amazing play. Got totally into the zone, wasn't paying attention. Won't happen again. Oh, hey, you're that new assistant the studio was sending over, aren't you? You play any hockey? Our side's down a guy; Dante had to go take a call from the people over in Cologne. Something about the lighting rig we're setting up over there, making sure it's calibrated right, we’ve been trying to hash that out for a week now, you know how it is."

He waved his hockey stick illustratively at the rest of the room, where several more players in athletic gear stood waiting for him. A cursory glance suggested considerable variety in gender and build, and at least one player with the unmistakable silvery carapace of an Omnic. The floor beneath them, though, was what was giving Satya a hollow, nervous feeling in the pit of her stomach. It was one great, glossy sheet of solid, chill blue light, casting monster-movie patterns of brightness and shadow across the players’ faces. Not too different from Vishkar tech, in theory, but different enough to be completely _wrong._

By the time Satya tore her gaze away from them and back to the man in front of her, she could feel her whole prepared speech go rushing right out of her head, like a flock of escaping birds. "I, um, that is, I, uh..." she said instead.

"Oh! Hang on, I'm getting way ahead of myself here. Introductions." He stuck out a hand. "Hey. I'm Lucio."

Of course he was.

"I'm Ananya Aluri," Satya told him, and then--for lack of anything else to say--"and I've never played hockey in my life."

She’d hoped for a brief moment that this would be enough to throw Lucio off his relentless stride, but no such luck: his beaming grin didn’t waver for a moment. "Not a problem, not a problem! We're just messing around to get some momentum going. Rehearsals always go better if everyone can really feel the synergy, know what I mean? It’s all about being part of the team. But hey--no pressure, but if you ever want to jump in, just say the word. It's not too hard to learn."

“Perhaps another time,” Satya said, hoping she’d managed to keep her face as neutral as possible. Her briefing packet had definitely not mentioned anything about impromptu bouts of full-contact sports being part of a personal assistant’s responsibilities, but really, it had been foolish of her to expect anything to be even remotely straightforward where Lucio was concerned.

If the dismissiveness had shown through, Lucio gave no sign that he’d noticed it. "You're from India, right? Hyderabad, I think they said, in the south?"

Where had he learned how to pronounce “Hyderabad” correctly? Satya inclined her head briefly, wondering if she would ever stop feeling wrong-footed. “That’s right, yes.”

Lucio nodded. "I guess hockey’s not really as much of a thing over there, huh? Or, hell, I could be wrong, I don't know. Don’t wanna assume. Tomorrow's gonna be the first time I've ever left Brazil."

In point of fact, the introduction of hard-light skating rinks was finally allowing winter sports in India to move down from their traditional homes in the mountains of the northeast, into population centers like Utopaea and Mumbai. Satya had read a paper on it at some point. But now didn't seem like the best time to mention that. _Irrelevant and immaterial,_ Satya chastised herself, in a mental register that somehow managed to sound like her least favorite aunt from back home.

Belatedly, she realized that Lucio had said something else while her mind was wandering, and she'd completely missed it. "Come again?" she asked, feeling her face burn with embarrassment.

"I was just saying, so what brings you all the way out here to Rio? Well, I mean, you’re joining our team, obviously, but what made you want to do that?"

Fortunately, there had been an answer for this in Satya's briefing packet. "I've been traveling internationally with the studio for a number of years now,” she said. “They're very interested in the growing music scene here in Rio, so they asked me to come along and make sure your concert tour is the huge success we're all hoping for."

And then, off-script, with maybe just a hint of a smug little grin: "I'm very, very good at keeping things running smoothly." Sometimes, there was no better lie than the truth. The briefing packet had mentioned that several times.

Lucio beamed at her--Satya hadn’t thought his grin could get any wider than it already was, but somehow he managed it. "That is awesome. That's what we need. None of us have ever done anything like this before; we're all kind of making it up as we go along. Hey, sometime you're gonna have to tell me about all the places you've been to, all the bands you've worked with! It sounds amazing."

"Of course," Satya assured him, sincerely hoping he would forget to ever mention it again.

Just as abruptly as he’d first run into her, Lucio turned and started skating for the other corner of the room, where the rest of his team still stood waiting, laughing uproariously over some joke or other. He turned back over his shoulder to beckon Satya along. "Well, hey, come on! What are we waiting for? Come meet the band! Hey, guys, guys, everyone shut up for a second and say hi to our new assistant!”

Before she’d really had time to process it, Satya found herself going down the line of Lucio’s team members--a motley group of very sweaty people, most half-in and half-out of their hockey gear--shaking hands and murmuring generic phrases of greeting. Lucio skated along a few paces ahead of her, calling out introductions-- “nothing around here would get done without Karel, and he’s not gonna let anyone forget it,” “this is Alê, don’t believe one word she tells you about me, it’s all lies and slander,” and so on.

Satya had read carefully through Vishkar’s files on all of these people, but actually meeting them like this was overwhelming. For all that Lucio was theoretically a one-person act, it took a staggering number of human beings to keep his show running, and it didn’t take long at all before the faces began to blur together. She tried to ignore the prickle of sweat at her back, and did her best to keep her prosthetic arm held at her side and out of sight. She’d had it repainted for her role as Ananya--a soft, burnished bronze covering the usual white--and hopefully that would be enough. But if anyone here thought they recognized it, and then her...well, it didn’t bear thinking about.

A sudden jolt of pain brought her back to the present in a hurry. Apparently it was her other hand she had to worry about right now--the last member of Lucio’s team, a tall woman with close-cropped hair, was gripping it like she was making a serious attempt to crush it. “Going to be keeping us in line, huh?” she asked, and not even Satya could miss the flinty look in her eyes.

“That’s right,” said Satya coolly, keeping her posture perfectly straight. It was going to take much more than that to intimidate her.

The other woman dropped her hand, rolling her eyes without even bothering to disguise it. “Good luck with that.”

Lucio skated back into the middle of the group, spun around for no real reason at all, and clapped his hands together briskly. “Okay! So now that we’re all together, let’s talk plans. Time to get this thing off the ground.”

Satya took in a steadying breath, and reached for the folder full of her plans for the tour. She had all of its contents memorized by now, but it would be good to have something to hold on to.

All things considered, she would have preferred to keep both feet on the ground. But she’d make the best of what she could get.

* * *

“Hey, Ananya, wait up!”

Satya didn’t respond to Lucio’s shout right away. For one thing, she was still halfway deafened from the “songs” he’d just finished running through. Only a few minutes in, her ears had been ringing, and her jaw had started to ache from grinding her teeth together. Sales numbers didn’t lie, but if millions of people actually _enjoyed_ this kind of awful noise, it had to be proof of Sanjay’s theories about the progress of civilization requiring a strong guiding hand.

For another thing, it hadn’t quite sunk in yet that “Ananya” meant _her._

When the realization caught up to her, she stopped herself short at the door of the rehearsal room, waiting for Lucio to catch up to her. Whatever he had to say, she prayed it would be over quickly; she desperately wanted to get back to her hotel room and rest before she completely unraveled.

It was hard to tell in the darkened room, but something about Lucio’s face looked almost...concerned. "Hey, I just wanted to say sorry if the band seemed a little frosty earlier,” he said once he’d caught up to her. “I thought I was picking up on some of that vibe. It's not like them; they're usually cooler than that."

Satya waved him off. "It's not a problem. It's never easy, meeting new people."

In spite of her fondest hopes, Lucio did not let the matter drop and walk away. Instead, he shuffled awkwardly around in place, staring at the floor. It was the first time Satya could remember seeing the lightbulb brightness of his demeanor dimmed even slightly. "It's not that so much--” he finally said. “It’s just...well, look.”

He drew in a deep breath before continuing. “All of these guys still remember what happened with Vishkar. A bunch of people from India who didn't know shit about Rio, marching in here and trying to change everything without giving us a say. I think some of them thought--” he waved both hands at her, palms out in an apologetic gesture, as if to forestall an expected objection--“look, I know it's stupid, it's not fair, whatever you're gonna say about it, you're right. But I guess they thought you coming in here felt familiar, ‘cause of that, or something."

Satya had the distinct feeling of one keeping a fragile balance over a vast, deadly drop. She fought down the feeling of vertigo, the hammering of her heart. “I see,” she said, not trusting herself to say anything more for the moment.

Fortunately, Lucio hastened to jump in and fill the silence. "Don't worry, I talked to them,” he told her, his arms folded across his chest now and his jaw set. “Made sure they all remembered that that kind of prejudice doesn't fly here. You're here with us now, you're part of the family. End of story. They'll warm up to you soon, I promise."

If she was a part of this 'family' now, Satya thought to herself, she was never, ever going to come home for the holidays. "Thank you for taking the trouble," was all she said aloud.

"Hey, it's no trouble. I'm just glad to have you here.” Satya had still been holding out a flicker of hope that the conversation would end there, but to her dismay, the reverse happened: Lucio leaned in closer to her, something in his eyes changing. “Look, can I be real with you for a second?"

That phrasing called to mind the all-too-tempting notion that Lucio had _not_ been real up to this point, just some nightmarish dream of chaos conjured up by stress or indigestion. "Of course," Satya said, and braced herself.

What she got next from Lucio was the last thing she expected: silence.

"I didn't plan for any of this to happen, you know?” he finally said in a very quiet voice, looking at the floor again. “I never really thought it was going to get this far. Seems like yesterday my shows were just me and the guys, a couple of friends in the audience, or drunk people who wandered in just 'cause it was cheap. Or playing in the background at parties, when no one was even really paying attention. That kind of thing."

Satya inclined an eyebrow. “I would have thought those days were over when your fight against Vishkar started making international headlines.” The risk of mentioning Vishkar so directly left her feeling a little breathless, but it _was_ a well-known matter of public record--she wouldn’t be able to avoid the subject forever.

Lucio chuckled mirthlessly. “Well, yeah, but it’s not like we had much of a choice about that. We were fighting for our home, no one else was gonna do it for us. All we really wanted after that was to keep on doing what we’re doing, you know?”

Satya forced herself to nod, her teeth gritted. After the riots, she’d also wanted to “just keep on doing what she was doing.” But Lucio and his fellow insurrectionists hadn’t exactly given her that option.

“Then Sonhos Omnicos got big, all over the world, and the word got out about what happened with the Vishkar riots. Next thing I know, they’re telling me I’m a superstar.”

Lucio sighed. “Don’t get me wrong, I believe in the music. I believe in the message. The whole show we’ve put together--everyone’s been giving it their best, and I can’t wait for people to see it. But that doesn’t mean it’s not a little scary, you know? Throwing yourself out into the world with no idea how it’s all gonna end up.”

He didn’t know how right he was about that, on more than a few levels. Satya just stood there and looked at him, until she was sure the silence had stretched on for an uncomfortably long interval.

The spark of resentment kindling inside of her was a surprise at first, but the more she thought about it, the more incensed she felt. Everything about this was completely ridiculous.

She’d worked herself to the bone for everything she had. Studied until she saw diagrams and blueprints burning in front of her vision every time she closed her eyes. Learned to hold herself perfectly still and silent, even when she wanted nothing more than to break down. Even when the riots, and now this absurd concert tour, had wrenched her life off its course, she’d survived, and adapted. She’d made herself perfect.

Because she had to be.

And now here was Lucio in front of her, a man who’d blundered his way from one improbable success to the next. He’d stumbled into stardom without knowing what he was doing, without even doing any of it on purpose in the first place. And now here he was, setting off on an international tour while cheerfully admitting he wasn’t prepared at all.

It wasn’t _fair._

“You should probably get some rest,” Satya said, not bothering to keep the coldness completely out of her voice. “Your team is loading up and leaving for the spaceport at five tomorrow, correct? I’ll be there to help out with anything you might require.”

There was a stiff moment of silence, as uncomfortable as missing a step going downstairs.

“Right, yeah,” Lucio said, the quiet, careful note gone from his voice. “Sorry for unloading everything on you there, it’s just...got a lot to process right now. Guess we’ll figure it out together.”

Satya nodded. “Right.”

“Have a good night.”

“You as well.”

And then, thank heaven, he was gone.

Satya felt the door to the rehearsal room lock behind her and strode away from the place, a brisk feeling of satisfaction returning to her steps. She avoided looking down at the wavy black-and-white mosaic patterns of the sidewalks--over the intervening years, she’d forgotten how they always made her feel a little dizzy. Once she was sure she’d gotten far enough away from the place, she produced her phone and started composing her first progress report for Vishkar.

In the dusk, the blue light of the screen reflected a soft glow back onto her face, and there was something strangely soothing about it. Ananya Aluri, the suffocating air of Rio, the absurdity of the whole day--for a few moments, they all washed away.

The real Satya Vaswani was still there, underneath it all, and she had work to do.

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Sorry for the delay on this one--some tech issues intervened, among other things--but hopefully better late than never! At last the two main characters of this fic have met, and as you can tell, it's already going great. 
> 
> Next stop: Cologne, and the official start of the concert tour! Let's get this disaster on the road.


	3. Cologne

**III. Cologne**

* * *

 As disgustingly short-notice as Satya’s change of job description had been, it hadn’t taken her long to start making plans. Before the plane left Galeão with Lúcio’s tour crew aboard, she’d already planned out an efficient, orderly schedule for her first full day in Cologne:

  * Up at five-thirty
  * 6:15-7:00: Morning yoga and dance exercises
  * 7:00-7:30: Tea and meditation
  * 7:30-8:00: A light breakfast
  * 8:00-8:30: Checking messages and responding as needed (first the ones related to the concert tour, then the ones from Vishkar on a separate encrypted account)
  * 8:45-9:45: Preliminary scouting of the concert venue; checking in with on-site personnel to finalize the evening schedule
  * 10-12:30: Herding Lúcio to a publicity event in the city center at noon
  * 12:30-1:15: Lunch
  * 1:30-2:30: Compose progress report to Vishkar superiors while Lúcio and his team rehearse
  * 2:30-3:15: A review of local and international media coverage of the concert tour; checking in with social media activity as needed
  * 3:30-4:00: Briefing Lúcio on any messages or press cuttings that require his immediate attention
  * 4:00: Back to the venue to prepare for the show.



Simple, elegant, yet comprehensive. Time for everything—and everything in its time. Perfection.

It took Lúcio less than two hours to ruin everything.

* * *

  **6:45 a.m.**

He showed up at her hotel room door halfway through her usual dance exercises, clapping loudly instead of knocking, and of course it had to happen at a moment when she was balancing very carefully on one foot. It took every fiber of her concentration not to topple to a painful landing on her hands and knees, and the whole world still felt somehow off-kilter as she went to open the door.

Lúcio, of course, was the same as ever. A live wire, bright and sparking and dangerous. “Hey!” he greeted her, striding into her room with a wave and a big grin. “Hope I’m not interrupting anything important, I just had a thing I wanted to run by you before we got started for today—oh, by the way, you got any coffee left in here you’d be willing to part with? If not, that’s okay, I don’t wanna be an imposition, but I just…” He waved a chaotic hand in the air, briefly inarticulate. “Jet lag. Hitting me like a truck here.”

If this was Lúcio _with_ jet lag, Satya never, ever wanted to see him _without_ it. With luck, the concert tour’s schedule would mean she never had to. Pursing her lips and breathing out an almost inaudible sigh through her nose, she picked up one of the packages of instant coffee resting on an adjacent imitation-marble countertop, and—against her better judgment—tossed it to Lúcio.

He caught it deftly and gave her an exaggerated bow of thanks. Satya fixed him with a thoughtful frown. “What’s the thing?”

Lúcio just stared blankly back at her. “Sorry?”

Satya bit her tongue on an impatient retort. Maybe there was something to his claim of jet lag, after all. “You said you had, quote, ‘a thing I wanted to run by you before we got started.’ So what is the thing?”

“Oh! Right.” He smacked his forehead with one palm. When he started talking again, it was even faster than before, as if he were trying to get all the words out before Satya had a chance to object. “So, okay, there’s this DJ I know here in Cologne, does really amazing work. I was just chatting with her, and she asked me if I wanted to swing by her studio and record a little something for a new track she’s working on. Shouldn’t take too long, they’ve already got everything set up, and I mean, when am I gonna get another perfect opportunity like this?”

Satya just stared at him. “You can _not_ be serious. What about your scheduled public appearance at noon today? What about getting ready for your concert tonight? What about…”

Lúcio sighed. “Look, I know, I know, I’m kinda throwing things off here. You’re the one who’s in charge of making sure my schedule works out, so if you say there’s no way I can do it, that’s fine.”

There was a fractional pause, just long enough for Satya to hope he’d leave the matter there, but then he continued, his tone more subdued. “It’s just…she did a lot to raise awareness back when we were trying to get Vishkar out of Rio, helped get people talking about me and my music. I probably wouldn’t be here now if it wasn’t for her. So if there’s any way we can make it work…”

Satya wished she had another cup of tea. Come to that, she wished she was back in Utopaea, weaving light into a beautiful, complicated bridge or an ornate fountain, far away from all of this nonsense. But that daydream quickly faded, and she was only left with reality. And the reality was that there would clearly be no persuading Lúcio to abandon his new mission.

It would be a mistake to let him go, she knew it would. Not only would it throw her perfect schedule into total disarray, but this was exactly what Vishkar wanted to stop Lúcio from doing. Making international connections, building solidarity, growing more dangerous. Transforming from a man into a movement.

But he had her trapped. As much as Satya Vaswani wanted to refuse his request, Ananya Aluri had no plausible reason to do so that would not arouse suspicion. She was here to support and assist him, as far as he knew.

Satya pinched the bridge of her nose between forefinger and thumb and let out a lengthy sigh. She indulged herself just long enough to glare daggers at the back of his head, then spoke in Ananya’s warm, professional tones. “Very well. If you think there’s time, I’ll defer to your…good judgment. Give me a few moments to reconfigure your schedule for today. How much time do you think you’ll need?”

Lúcio beamed at her, bouncing on his heels. “You’re the best. It’s really not a big thing, I swear—an hour, maybe? Two hours tops?”

“Very well,” Satya said, doing her best to make it sound like she wasn’t speaking through gritted teeth.

Lúcio, who’d been headed for the door, paused just long enough to turn and shoot her a thumbs-up. “Obrigado! I’ll go grab my stuff now; I know we gotta make it to that thing at noon on time.”

“You owe me a favor after this,” Satya said.

“Right.”

“You owe me _several_ favors.”

“Yup!”

Then he was gone. The door shut behind him, and Satya stood and looked at it for a few long moments, holding onto a tiny shred of hope that she could still somehow wake up from the perfect nightmare that was Lúcio Correia dos Santos.

* * *

**12:50 p.m.**

Six hours later, chasing Lúcio down yet another winding, crowded street, her heels aching and sweat prickling at her lower back, Satya admitted to herself that getting the day back in order might be a lost cause.

“You’re _sure_ you know where you’re going?” she called ahead.

Lúcio shouted something back to her without turning around. Satya didn’t catch all of it, but she was fairly sure it had been some variation on “don’t worry about it!” Two days in, and she already knew that was her cue to start worrying more.

The beginning of the day’s derailment had been quiet, almost dull. After Lúcio’s enthusiastic reunion with his disc-jockey friend, Satya had found herself marooned outside a soundproof recording booth while the two of them got to work. At first, she’d been itching with impatience, wishing desperately that she could hear what they were getting up to. Exchanging coded messages? Consolidating anti-Vishkar plans? Or just innocently making music? Somehow, that last option didn’t seem likely.

Satya had briefly considered rigging up a hard-light listening device, but the promise of overhearing something worth reporting didn’t seem worth the risk of blowing her cover. Instead, she’d decided to sort through her correspondence again, already getting the sinking feeling that she wouldn’t have time for it later. Vishkar’s check-ins had been subtle but constant, hovering without giving the impression that they were hovering--a company speciality.

It had been a mad dash after that to shepherd Lúcio to his PR event in the city center at noon. They’d scrambled into place, out of breath, with only seconds to spare, which was hardly the first impression Satya had hoped for. But Lúcio, at least, had stood in his assigned place and said all the right things. Satya had hovered nearby and watched the sun break through smudgy layers of cloud, allowing herself a moment of hope that things could get on track. They’d have to compress their lunch hour somewhat, but she could make things work.

Lúcio hadn’t wasted any time cheerfully shattering that hope for her. On their way out, he’d told her that his DJ friend had recommended a restaurant that the two of them just _had_ to try, that it wouldn’t be too far out of their way, that he wouldn’t consider his experience of Cologne complete until he’d had a chance to soak in a little of the local food scene.

Yet again, Satya had found herself backed into a corner, not sure how to object without seeming suspicious. And so here they were, hopelessly lost in downtown Cologne, in search of a place that Lúcio still insisted was just around the corner.

Cologne was a city packed to the brim with anachronisms and contrasts. Glittering, ultramodern skyscrapers shared space with centuries-old houses painted in bright primary colors, neon-studded nightclubs sat next to antiquated breweries, and the age-worn spires of the massive Kölner Dom cathedral presided over it all. The overall effect was as if someone had poured the pieces of two or three completely different jigsaw puzzles together, and crammed the whole mess together along the banks of the Rhine.

Trying to navigate through it gave Satya a headache. She’d never appreciated before just how much she’d gotten used to living in Utopaea--a city where even the oldest buildings were younger than she was, and where everything was laid out in precise, logical patterns. To go from that to a place that had been heaped together out of the accumulated debris of centuries--well, it was taking some adjustment.

Lúcio—at least as much of an irritatingly chaotic element as the city around him—was having no such trouble fitting in.

“Ha! Here it is!” he shouted now, making a beeline for a storefront across the street. “See, I told you we were almost there.”

Satya studied the sign over the door of the establishment, which identified it as a shabby pizzeria. _This_ was the jewel of the local food scene that they’d gone so far out of their way to visit?

Inside the grimy restaurant, it only took a few minutes for her to realize two closely related, horrifying facts:

  * Germany apparently shared Brazil’s national delusion that tuna and onions made for an acceptable pizza topping, and
  * That combination was Lúcio’s favorite.



“It’s not like they make it at home,” Lúcio mumbled through a foul-smelling, cheesy mouthful. “But it’s still _really_ good. You wanna try a slice?”

Satya curled her lip disdainfully. “Is that a serious question?”

“Oh, uh, sorry, are you a vegetarian, or…?”

As it happened, she was, but Satya saw no need to give Lúcio any more information about herself than was strictly necessary. “I have _taste._ ”

“All right then, more for me.” He shrugged and bit into the slice, unperturbed. Satya, for her part, turned her full attention to her salad and hardly spared Lúcio another glance.

If nothing else, she reflected grimly, today’s events were giving her a more accurate picture of her new job than any briefing packet could have managed. Lúcio’s role in this arrangement, apparently, was to go wherever his ridiculous desires led him. Her job was to hang on for dear life, and try to minimize the chaos.

A curl of steam wafted over to her side of the table from Lúcio’s pizza, carrying an aroma with all the savory delight of a decaying wharf. Satya did her best to fight down the nausea, which was already starting to feel disturbingly routine.

Evidently, her job also included spending the afternoon handing Lúcio breath mints. When this whole mess was over, she was going to send Sanjay a letter thanking him for putting her Architech talents to such good use.

* * *

  **1:50 p.m.**

Satya walked into the stadium-sized dome of the concert venue, and felt a slight tingle of unease sweep through her body as her eyes adjusted to the lower light. She wasn’t expecting to be tackled by any musicians in full hockey gear this time around, but since she’d missed her morning inspection of the venue, she had no idea what she _should_ expect.

Rather than dwell on the uncertainty, she turned to Lúcio, who was taking in the massive space with an awestruck expression. “All right, everything should be in place for your rehearsal,” she told him. “After that, we should still have time to…”

That was as far as she got. They’d been walking and talking, and as soon as Satya saw what was waiting for them in the auditorium proper, she trailed off in mid-sentence, her jaw going slack with surprise.

Lúcio grinned over at her, apparently not seeing the dismay in her expression. “Pretty great, isn’t it?”

The auditorium looked like a cathedral exploding in slow motion, waves and shards of eye-watering lime green light spreading out from the stage like soundwaves caught in stained glass, a kaleidoscope of chaos. But it wasn’t just random visual noise, as much as Satya desperately wished it was. While some of the light projections appeared to be nothing more than decoration, others were clearly pathways, like the loops and curves of a roller coaster, stretching all the way around the audience seats.

"What is this?" Satya asked weakly.

Lúcio gestured to the glowing pathways with a salesman’s flourish, bouncing on his heels with barely contained excitement. "Hard light skating track. It’s our big secret. Totally cutting edge—nobody else has got something like this.”

“I…” Satya tried to ask around her dry throat, racking her brain for any clue to how on earth she hadn’t caught any hint of this before now. “ _Why_ are you doing this?” she finally managed.

“For the drama of it all!” Lúcio said, jogging up one glowing green ramp and executing a neat somersault that sent him skidding back down to Satya’s level. “Seriously, though, it’s about changing the experience. Total immersion, that’s the name of the game. I don't want this tour to just be me up on the stage alone, and everyone else is way out _there_ , you know? I wanna really bring the show to the people—that’s what it’s all about. So the hard-light pathways are gonna let me skate around, really connect with the audience, you feel me?”

“I…I don’t…are you planning to do this at every stop on the tour?”

Lúcio still didn’t seem to be noticing any signs of distress on Satya’s part. He just nodded briskly, his visor glowing an especially bright green in the reflected light. “We’ll rig up something for every venue, yeah. It’ll be a little different from one place to the next. But for this first stop, we really had to go all out. I mean, come on, this is _Germany_ we’re talking about here. We’re gonna make this thing look like Eurovision meets _Starlight Express_.”

Satya wasn’t familiar with the things Lúcio was referencing, but she wasn’t about to admit to that. Anyway, she had plenty of good reasons to be horrified even without factoring them into it.

She opened her mouth, took in a deep breath, searched for the right words, and decided to cut right to the heart of the matter. "No."

The hundred-watt grin melted off Lúcio’s face, replaced with a puzzled frown. "Sorry?"

"No, this is not--it's absolutely--you can't--" Satya stuttered to a halt, abruptly enough to bite her tongue. It wasn’t that she was lost for words this time. She had _plenty_ to tell Lúcio about the dangers of amateur hard-light design work, and the bevy of tests that any structure would have to pass to ensure it would maintain sufficient structural integrity under pressure, and the sheer inadequacy of government-designed safety regulations to satisfactorily address this emergent and quickly evolving technology. But those were Satya Vaswani’s concerns, and Ananya Aluri would know nothing about any of them.

“Isn’t...isn’t that dangerous?” she finally said, face burning with embarrassment at how utterly pathetic that sounded.

Lúcio, for his part, merely tossed up his shoulders in a lazy shrug. “I mean, sure, I guess, but it’s not like I haven’t been practicing. We’ve been working on this show for two years, remember? And anyway, I’ve done _way_ more dangerous stuff than this in my time.”

 _‘More dangerous stuff’ like inciting an armed revolution against my colleagues,_ Satya thought, gritting her teeth. She didn’t know why she was even surprised that he’d taken Vishkar technology and twisted it into something unrecognizable and dangerous again--why should he let go of an old habit?

For a moment, as her temples pulsed with a warm, exhausted swell of irritation, she wondered if it would be such a bad thing to just leave Lúcio to his death trap of a roller coaster. Let him take an unexpected dive into the audience he claimed to love so much, and let the chips fall where they may.

But the vengeful feeling passed as quickly as it had come on, and she let her breath out in an unsteady sigh. She had orders to follow, and she was going to follow them, no matter how uncomfortable or irritating things became. And besides, Satya Vaswani didn’t go out of her way to hurt people, not when there was a better option.

She let her breath out in a long, uneven sigh, then turned back to Lúcio. “Go on and start your rehearsal. Make sure you run through all of the choreography. I’ll be watching from the sidelines.”

Lúcio, who’d spotted the rest of his band warming up on the stage, spared her only a moment for a brief nod, and then he was gone.

Satya closed her eyes, relishing the fractional moment of darkness and peace, then opened them again and tapped the side of her glasses in a careful sequence. They weren’t as powerful as her old familiar visor, but they had enough onboard applications to execute the plan she had in mind. Then she sat back and let the deafening noise of Lúcio’s rehearsal wash over her. This would have to suffice for a moment’s relaxation. After the rehearsal, she had work to do.

* * *

  **3:20 p.m.**

Satya waited ten minutes after the rehearsal ended,alone in the vast, empty space of the auditorium with the twisted hard-light track glowing above her in a hundred unearthly shades of green. Then she waited another ten, until she was absolutely sure that none of Lúcio’s bandmates were coming back in. After a day like today, she was in no mood to risk blowing her cover, even for a moment.

When she was satisfied that she was alone, she activated the hologram she’d captured during the rehearsal. A shimmering, translucent Lúcio rose up in the middle of the stage, limbs moving in a ghostly echo of its real-life counterpart.

Satya nodded, satisfied that she’d managed to capture the copy reasonably well. Heart hammering, she lifted her photon projector, muttering a prayer under her breath that no one would come back and catch sight of it.

The solution she’d hit on was a quick fix, a hasty last-minute affair, but she was reasonably confident that it would work. The hologram Lúcio would follow its routine to the letter, fast-forwarding or rewinding or pausing whenever Satya needed it to. In those respects, it wasn’t a very accurate recreation of the real Lúcio. But it would serve the purpose Satya needed it to.

And besides, after a day like today, she’d earned the right to a little wishful thinking.

She’d put the dummy through its paces on the whole hard-light skating course, making fine-grained adjustments as needed, until the whole setup was as safe as Vishkar’s top architech knew how to make it. As long as Lúcio didn’t do anything wildly unpredictable during the show, he would be perfectly fine.

Satya breathed out a long sigh through her nose and forced herself to stop grinding her teeth.

It was going to be a long night.

* * *

**11:45 p.m.**

Just a few more minutes, Satya promised herself. The endless, serpentine queue of autograph seekers was finally down to its last few stragglers. Her sense of hearing was finally starting to recover from the thunderous onslaught of Lúcio’s set, although she was sure her ears would be ringing for days. She only had to endure this for a few more minutes. Then she could get away from this whole mess, find somewhere quiet and alone, get a cup of very strong tea, and compose her next mission report while she waited for her headache to go away.

Of course, Lúcio’s energy hadn’t flagged by even the tiniest shred. Satya’s quick-and-dirty safety test had worked, and he’d spent hours skating his merry way around the arena, but he was every bit as much of a perpetual motion machine as he’d been that morning.

Even after signing what had to be thousands of shirts and albums, he was still chattering away, making enthusiastic conversation with the tall brunette woman at the end of the line. “And listen, I’ll throw in an extra copy of the album for your boss too. Maybe he’ll finally stop making you listen to ‘Night Rocker’ every day; I’m pretty sure that qualifies as a war crime in some countries. Okay! 'For Brigitte'--sorry, tell me again how you spell that? It's permanent ink, be a hell of a time to guess and get it wrong..."

 _This is it,_ Satya told herself, heart leaping with weary excitement as the autograph seeker ambled away. _Finally we can leave this benighted place and rest._

…but oh, of _course_ it couldn’t be that simple _._ There was one more fan who’d been hanging back from the last dregs of the queue: a short, dark-haired, shy-looking woman, taking shelter off to the side with a few of her friends and darting anxious glances at Lúcio when she thought no one was looking. As Satya looked on, one of the the woman’s friends--a taller redhead--gave her a purposeful shove in the back and whispered something that sounded like “come on, just go talk to him!”

She took a moment to shoot her friend a helpless _what-have-you-gotten-me-into_ look, then stumbled forward to the table, wringing her hands together anxiously.

Satya gritted her teeth as Lúcio looked up to greet the new fan. _Don’t waste your time being awed by this man!_ she wanted to shout. _He’s nothing more than a hockey hooligan who can’t think of a better use for the most incredible technology in the world than DUBSTEP!_

Too late: she took a deep breath, then another, and finally started talking. “Lúcio, I—I have something I wanted to tell you, and I… _gott im himmel,_ I’m so sorry, I told myself I wasn’t going to be awkward about this…”

He waved a hand and smiled at her, warm and reassuring. “No, no, it’s okay. Take your time; I’m not going anywhere.”

 _Yes you ARE!_ Satya just barely restrained herself from blurting out. _You’re going to Paris in less than twenty-four hours, and before that we need to review your schedule for the rest of the week, and before THAT we need to…_

“I guess I just wanted to say…thank you,” the woman continued, staring down at Lúcio’s table and holding one arm behind her back, her voice almost too soft for Satya to hear. “Your music…you have no idea how much it’s done for me. I grew up in a small town in Sweden, but it’s not too different there from how things are here. The scars of the Omnic Crisis run deep in this part of the world. The older people, they still remember what it was like, everything burning, they remember what happened in Stuttgart and Eichenwalde. We all grew up with posters of the Crusaders on our walls...for a lot of people, life never really went back to normal. It...it makes things hard, sometimes.”

Satya paused and bit her lip, her frustration simmering down into mild curiosity. There might be something here worth listening to, after all. Useful notes on the local mood for future Vishkar development, if nothing else.

Lúcio, for his part, finally looked tired, in a way Satya had never seen him before. “Yeah,” he said, voice heavy. “I know a thing or two about what that’s like.”

Lúcio’s fan sighed. “I had some bad years, growing up...there were times when it was hard to see a way ahead. I couldn't believe I was going to make it. Then I found your songs. I've listened to all of them about a thousand times each. I've read what you said in your interviews. About unity, and resistance, and healing. About believing in a world where Omnics and humans can come together, celebrate their differences, and change the world. Your music saved me, Lúcio. I just wanted you to know that. And I…like I told you, I just wanted to say thank you.”

“Sounds to me like you saved yourself,” Lúcio said. “But I’m glad I could be a part of it. How do you feel about hugs?”

The woman wiped the last few tears away from her eyes, a smile spreading across her face like the sun coming out from behind a cloud. “I’m in favor.”

Beaming, Lúcio vaulted over the table and tackled her into an enthusiastic embrace. Probably a dreadful breach of security protocol, in theory, but Satya knew that pointing that out wouldn’t have changed a thing.

Satya took that as her cue to step away, headed back to the green room. Lúcio was clearly going to be a while, and she wasn’t needed here.

It took her a while to realize what had unsettled her so much about the exchange. She’d always had a vague sense that Lúcio’s messages of unity and solidarity were nothing more than a stage persona, a palatable way to market his anti-Vishkar agenda. But what she’d seen today had erased that suspicion completely, cut off every escape route until she had no choice but to admit the truth. Lúcio _believed_ in what he said, really and truly believed it. Scratching the surface of his compulsively friendly demeanor, she’d found nothing but more and more layers of the same.

Learning this should have felt reassuring. Instead, the uneasy feeling in the pit of her stomach had multiplied.  

Satya had a feeling it was going to be a while before she could get to sleep. Perhaps it was just as well. She was going to need the extra time to compose her report to Vishkar—she no longer had any idea what to say.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> At last, the concert tour is properly underway! And Satya and Lucio are getting along...about as well as could be expected under the circumstances, anyway. We'll check in with them next on a small, rainy island a ways west from here...
> 
> Many thanks, as always, to songofsunset for being the best beta reader/cheerleader a writer could ask for!

**Author's Note:**

> Rearrange the Stars updates every other Tuesday.
> 
> I've been wanting to get this fic out into the world for ages now. Lucio and Symmetra have been my faves since day one of Overwatch, and I've always wanted to write an epic life-changing road trip for the two of them. I hope you all enjoy the journey as much as I do! I should note that I'm a relatively clueless Midwestern American, so if anyone has thoughts on how I could be portraying these two better as Brazilian and Indian characters respectively, please don't hesitate to let me know!
> 
> I'm shamrockjolnes over on tumblr; feel free to drop by and talk headcanons or whatever!


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